Coin Day

I have just realised that I forgot to tell you about Coin Day. How could I have forgotten?!

One day that I was complaining that we had already started taking our new home city for granted, Krusty came up with a great idea. Or at least I thought it was great. Maybe I was just very bored. No, no, I still can't help but love it.

Anyway, the idea was to become tourists again so that we would have the same wide-eyed outlook on our neighbourhood as when we arrived. To achieve this, his stroke of genius was to suggest that we let the toss of a coin decide what our path for the day would be. This has distinct disadvantages of course, but after a whole day of random wandering, we did get to see things very differently!

We started out at the new flat, and let the coin decide which way we should go. Heads was right, tails were left at each intersection we came to, and we also flipped it at each pedestrian crossing to decide whether we should cross or not. We even started tossing the coin at bus stops to decide whether we should get on, and then again at each stop inside the bus to decide whether we should get off.

So the coin took us right down Des Voeux Road West, then right again at Wilmer Street and soon we were at the crossover and the - very - uninteresting harbour front, where they are currently ripping everything down and there is therefore almost nothing to see. So far, we were not too impressed with the coin.




The coin then took us a little further to the left, and the path started to look interesting until we realised that we were in fact standing in front of the Drainage Services Central Preliminary Treatment Works. Wow. Although one guy had decided that this would be the perfect place for a spot of fishing...




And then, after a few more turns, we arrived...exactly where we had begun. By this time I was thinking of abandoning the whole idea, but Krusty ploughed on, and we ended up back in the more colourful seafood bits, paying much closer attention than usual to the Durian fruit, the dried geckos (yes, geckos) and the surrounding shops and stalls.

On Queen's Road West, the coin spoke again, asking us to go into a games arcade (by which time I suspected that Krusty's whim had a lot to do with the coin's 'voice', but what the...) and we sat down at the racing table for a quick game. The little plastic horses went round, and we started winning - big time. Getting a little excited, I threw my hands up into the air with a large cry of joy, and didn't understand why the only other two people in there were looking at me with such bored disdain, their cigarettes almost falling out of their tired pouts. They must just have been jealous, I thought, and continued to choose my next horse, scientifically explaining my choice to Krusty as if I was some kind of expert.

When the coin suddenly decided it was time to quit while we were ahead and leave, I moved to press the pay out button. And this is when reality came crashing down. It is actually ILLEGAL to gamble in Hong Kong apart from at specific places, on specific days (such as Wednesday nights at the Happy Valley racecourse), so even though my kitty looked huge on screen, it was all actually virtual and I had won absolutely nothing! I felt disappointed, but more than that, I just couldn't understand what these guys were doing here, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, playing a silly game with rubbish plastic horses with no chance of actually winning anything! What a waste of time...





And if you were wondering what a dried gecko (yes, gecko) looks like:



So, we continued up the street, past the goose chop shops and the snake speciality restaurant, asking the coin where we should eat each time. Turns out, the coin wanted us to walk around for two hours and deserve our lunch. At least I think that's what it - or Krusty - was trying to say.

It lead us in the end to the Ramada Hotel (which I didn't even know we lived next to), where we were led into a giant room full of neon lights and Cantonese sounds and smells, and we were sat down for a dim sum lunch, HK style. That includes delicious shrimp dumplings and pork buns, but also "Steamed Cattle's Tripe with Ginger and Spring Onion". Yum! (On another note of warning to those of you who plan to eat with Krusty in the near future, know that he always has to have one revolting thing off the menu in the spirit of trying everything at least once. So far we have had frog's legs, chicken feet and marinated firefly squid. Eating with Krusty is not for the squeamish...)




Quite surprisingly satisfied by our traditional and noisy lunch under the watchful eye of a tank of fish (who were all facing our way, making us think of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life throughout the meal), we continued on until the coin made us take the bus. And didn't make us get off until we were on the other side of the harbour - at Lai Chi Kok. Krusty was loving this adventurous turn, until the coin led us into a building that I recognised from when my friend got married a few years ago. I didn't say anything, but Krusty soon realised what was going on and started to doubt the coin's abilities when he was deep in the bowels of this wedding supermarket, surrounded by bridal gowns, corsages, satin and feathers. He decided to ignore the coin for a bit, just until we had found our way out and were far away from this temple to gaudy meringues... I had a discreet giggle in the process, of course.



Well out of sight of the nightmare, we watched a demonstration by the Falun Gong that was being closely monitored by the police. This giant group is a spiritual kind of sect established in 1992 who likes to sit around meditating a lot (there is always a Falun Gong member silently sitting in protest outside the Chinese embassy in London). They were out protesting the Chinese government while being completely surrounded by them. Brave move. But I suppose it's nice to live where people actually can protest and let their opinions be known...





By this time, we started to realise that we too were under some kind of spell, and that unless we started ignoring the coin, we were about to make it our own spiritual leader, give it all of our worldly possessions and lose all control over our lives. So Krusty put it back in his pocket and we went for a foot massage instead. And that, of course, was the best thing the coin had made us do all day...